Bernard DeLeo - Cold Blooded

“Or I transport the Kingfisher here to and from his work as he calls it, for quite a bit more money than my fishing enterprise pays,” Gus added.

“Is that a Boston accent?” Rachel asked. “I like it.”

“Born and raised there, but hated the weather. Usually, people are so shocked I don’t speak cornpone, they never notice the accent.”

“Sit down, Gus, and I’ll get you a beer.” Nick gestured for his friend to sit down at the dining room table. “You want to take a break from the movie, Danger, and sit with us?”

“Sure,” Jean answered happily, slipping into a seat opposite Gus and next to Rachel. “Do I get a beer too?”

“I don’t think so, young lady,” Rachel commented, giving Jean’s hair a tug.

“Did Nick just call you Danger?” Gus asked Jean.

“Yeah, like the girl in the comics. I’m Danger Girl. I can shoot and everything. Nick says I’m part of the Terminator team.”

“The Terminator?” Gus laughed long and hard, with everyone but Nick and Deke joining in. “Oh, very good…did you come up with that, Danger?”

“Yep,” Jean acknowledged proudly.

“These two know more about you than anyone, ever.”

“I’m in the process of changing my lifestyle,” Nick explained in deadpan fashion, which evoked more laughter from Gus. He turned to Rachel. “Unlike my friend in Denver, Gus here knows I’m not one of the good guys.”

“It’s true,” Gus agreed. “Some problems can’t be solved by good guys. Well, what’s my part in this enterprise, Terminator?”

“Rachel and I will be on recon during banking hours, starting tomorrow. I need you to look after Danger and Deke while we’re gone. When we’ve arrived at the moment for making a withdrawal, you’ll drop Rachel off at the SunTrust bank entrance and ride around until she calls for a pick up. There will be some excitement on her way from the bank to your car. We’ll handle that. You just drive the car.”

“Oh. ‘Drivin’ Ms. Daisy’, huh? Only in a hail of bullets?” Gus asked.

“There won’t be any hail of bullets, Gus. There might be a few guys dropping to the sidewalk on Rachel’s walk to your car. I also need you to rent a new car each day to come over here with. Rachel and I will drive it over to the bank.”

“I like that part.” Gus leaned forward. “What kind?”

“You pick. Don’t make it too flashy. We’ll need to have the windows all very dark.”

“Do you know how to play softball, Gus?” Jean asked.

“Sure thing, Danger. You a player?”

“Yep. I can hit pretty good. My mom beaned me, though, last time she pitched.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Rachel exclaimed, dropping her head to the table while the others laughed.

“I like your new crew, Terminator,” Gus announced.

“Danger’s been handled a couple times on our drive from the West Coast. I don’t want her touched again.”

“Count on that, brother. Swimming, softball, and I’ll teach Danger how to fish. Can we go to the beach? They have a spot here in Sarasota where dogs are allowed.”

“Can we, Nick?” Jean implored.

“Sure, if Gus is comfortable with the beach, I’m okay with it. Rach?”

“I…I guess it’ll be all right.”

“I see you’re worried, Rachel. Don’t be. I can imagine what happened to the guys who bothered Danger on the trip. With me, I’m more of a preemptive strike kind of guy, so we’ll be here waiting every day when you two get done at the bank.”

“Thank you.” Rachel grabbed Jean’s chin. “If she mentions the beaning one more time, she’ll need a bodyguard to keep me from pounding on her myself.”

Deke popped up to grip Rachel’s wrist with a short ‘grrfff,’ while Jean giggled appreciatively, wrapping her arm around Deke’s neck.

Gus chuckled. “Looks like she already has one.”

“I really liked Gus,” Rachel mentioned as Nick slowly drove down Main Street at nearly ten o’clock in the morning. She watched Nick’s notebook computer screen, while the video transmitter Nick had mounted above the front door frame on the passenger side sent images being filmed. Rachel could direct it slightly, or zoom in.

“I really like this Buick Lacerne. You’re getting the license numbers clearly, right?”

“Yes, Obi-Wan, all is as it should be, Master. You guys talked for three hours and never said a damn thing about how you met or what stuff you two did together.”

“I think I like the sound of Master.” Nick ignored Rachel’s quick glare as he sidestepped the rest of her comment. “It may be vaguely entertaining to know every detail about everything, Rachel, but it does nothing for our safety, or the people we deal with. We’re in the thick of it now.”

“You mean we do it by the book,” Rachel said sarcastically.

“There is no book. We do it by the same rules I’ve stayed alive with for over a decade.”

“You admitted breaking all the rules getting here.”

“This is why I work alone.” Nick turned into a parking lot down the street and headed the opposite direction on Main Street. “Would you like to risk the lives of everyone Gus cares about so you can gather a few more interesting facts?”

“No, but -”

“But nothing,” Nick cut her off. “You and Jean were taken away from me with the most obvious of ploys. I make mistakes when I’m flying by the seat of my pants. If those guys would have needed to question you, instead of needing something only you could get for them, guess what? You’d have told them your entire life’s story.”

“What about you?” Rachel argued, changing the transmitter position slightly with the joystick Nick had given her to use. “If you were -”

“I’ll never be taken,” Nick interrupted again. “We can park now. Maybe I can find a spot under one of those trees in the parking lot across the street.”

“We don’t have to shut off the car and the AC while we broil, do we?”

“I’m a psycho, not stupid. I don’t underestimate my enemies and I don’t project abnormal intelligence into common thugs doing a boring job. There’s a spot.”

Nick drove in a semicircle, parking with the front of their rented Buick pointed at an angle toward the front of SunTrust Bank’s main branch. He took out his spotting scope and checked the scene around the bank’s front entrance. Rachel used the mounted transmitter with digital zoom to scan the area on Nick’s notebook computer.

“I’m good. How about you?”

“We have only limited vision on the cars on our side,” Rachel answered.

“These guys won’t be sitting in a hot car all day,” Nick explained. “For one thing, the cops would be called in by bank security. One of the reasons you see a bank’s security guard walk around in front of the bank has nothing to do with getting a breath of fresh air. They look for cars parked too long in front of the bank with idling motors-or double parked cars.”

“That’s the reason you had me film so far down the street in both directions.”

“There are plenty of little shops on Main Street. They’ll be watching the bank with at least one of each team within grabbing distance. The other one will hover close to the car in case the grabber misses. We have a number of objectives. We need to ID our two teams and their vehicles. It will be important if we can determine whether they’re aware of each other. I’m betting Tanus doesn’t know where Javier went, so they’ll be flying blind. They’ll suspect Javier went rogue on them, but they won’t know with whom. Fletcher’s people will know Tanus has a team here. By the way, this is an inexact science.”

“Why is this starting to sound very familiar to me?” Rachel looked up at Nick from the notebook computer questioningly.